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Magic: The Gathering
"Magic - The Gathering" is the game this wiki is about. If you are completely new to MTG, you may want to get an overview by reading Wikipedia's article about it here (or read this page). Later you can return to this wiki for more specific information. Start/Deck Magic: The Gathering(Mtg) is a Trading Card Game (TCG). This means you'll have to buy cards or recieve cards from someone else to start to play. You can buy Decks, Booster Packs or Related Paraphernallia. You can buy them online or you can buy it from a game store. Once you have cards, you can trade with friends or other people. This way, you can trade the cards you can't use in your deck for something you can use. When you trade, look out for the Rarity of the card or its usefulness, or maybe its artwork. M:TG is a game that has something for everyone. A deck contains as many cards as you want, but to participate in a tournament, you need a Deck of at least 60 cards. There is no limit on how many cards you can have in your deck, but how more cards you have, how lower the chance you draw your best or favorite card. But if you have too few cards, you have a chance of running out of cards and losing the came. You can have to up to 4 cards with the same name in your deck, but some are more limited to 2 or even 1, and in a very rare place, you come up with a card that you can have as many as you want in you deck, like Relentless Rats. Relentless Rats says, "Relentless Rats gets +1/+1 for each other creature called Relentless Rats on your battlefield. You may have any number of creatures called Relentless Rats in you library." Basic Lands are another exception on this rule. It's wise to keep your number of cards close to 60. In game, your deck is called your library. How to win? There are three ways to defeat your opponent: #Every player starts the duel with 20 life. Whoever reduces his opponents life points to 0 first wins. You can do this by Attacking with Creatures or by casting Sorcerys or Instants. #When someone Decks-Out, he loses. To Deck out is to have no cards left on your library. He loses when he has to draw a card at his Draw Phase and can't. However, some cards, like Drumhunter, say to draw a card. If you have no cards, then just don't do the ability. It only happens at the Draw Phases #There Are some cards which let you win after a certain condition. Some cards say things like, "After this thing has 20 charge counters on it, you win the game." These are the ways to win. The Different Cards There are Seven "Types" a card can be: Land, Creature, Sorcery, Instant and Planeswalker, Enchantments, and artifacts. You can see which type it is in the middle of the card on the Type Line. Land Lands are your main source to retrieve Mana. (More about Mana will come further on this page) More info: Land A Land card is a Permanent, meaning it stays on the field till someone destroys it. Creatures are also Permanents. A Land is NOT a Spell. Basic Land Rules :You can play only one Land each turn, whether it's a Basic Land or nonbasic. :When you tap a land, you add one mana of that color to your Mana Pool. :At your Untap Phase, Untap your lands. Creature Creatures are the monsters you use to defeat your opponent. These monsters can change from Humans and Elves to Dragons to Wurm to Zombies. The easiest way to recognize a creature is their Power/Toughness. Each Creature has a small box on the bottom left of your card with two numbers in it, their Power and their Toughness. The older cards have "Summon" and the type of creature (Orc, Troll, Wurm,...) instead of the word "Creature - 'Type'". On the example card on the right, Scoria Wurm from mtg.wikia.org/wiki/Tenth_Edition has a power and toughness which are equal and both 7. Most Creatures have an Ability. There are lots of abilites, for example: trample, haste, first strike, double strike, flying, lifelink, etc. The all represent a different advatage for the creature. The Five colors There are five colors of cards: White, Blue, Green, Red and Black. Each of these colors has a "meaning". For example, white cards are "equal", meaning that commonly, white cards have equal power or defense. At least, the power is less than the defense. Basically, white means that power is not as important. Green's meaning is unique. Green commonly has the special abilites reach and trample. Also, green cards commonly have extreme power and defense to overwhelm opponent's creatures. Green creatures and cards could possibly be the best color types. Red cards have many interesting types and meanings. Red has a lot to do with power. For example, Lighting Talons and Claws of Valakut both have a lot of power, but they also have first strike. First Strike and Haste are the most common red abilities. Other red cards, like Incurable Ogre, and the token Zektar Shrine Expedition gives, have a lot to do with power or haste. Black cards commonly have to do with evil things, like taking cards out of graveyards or automatically destroying creatures. Hideous End, Execution's Capsule, Assassinate, Brink of Disaster, Mire Blight, and Feast of Blood are examples of black cards that simply destroy creatures, no matter what. This shows the value of black cards. Finally, blue cards have a lot to do with tapping or untapping, or making cards so they can't untap or tap, or deactivating them. Such cards are Ice Cage, Fatestitcher, Tideforce Elemental, Dehydration, and Coma Viel. Colorless cards usually don't exactly have any specific meaning. They are "independent". Mana And Mana Cost Each nonland card has a casting cost. If you look at the top right corner of the card, or occasionally left of the picture, you will see one or more symbols and commonly a number. These represent the casting cost or the mana cost. The number is always on the far left, followed by the mana symbols. When you cast something like Celestial Mantle, which had a casting cost of three white mana and a number of 3, the "3" means that it can be any type of mana. So now, you cast Celestial Mantle. To cast it, you need to fufill its mana cost. There is one basic thing used only for that: land. "Tap" three plains. That means turn it in a way so you know it is tapped. The land has the ability to add to your mana pool. The Celestial Mantle "uses" this mana to cast itself. It requires three specific land and three nonspecific. If you have the land to do this, you can successfully cast Celestial Mantle. This is just what Mana and Mana Cost are all about. Phases of a Turn Beginning Steps Each turn starts with the Untapping Stage. This is where you untap all of the permanents that were tapped in your last turn of sometimes on the opponents turn. This includes untapping Land, Creatures, and Artifacts. If you forget to untap any of these things before going to your next step, it's too late to untap them until next turn. The next step is your Upkeep. Some cards require an upkeep. Say, Soul Bleed. It says, "Enchant creature. At the beginning of the enchanted creature's upkeep, that player looses 1 life." Upkeep is basically an "optional" step that is used to fit in between the other steps. If you forget to activate the upkeep ability, it's too bad. The next step is the Draw. Here, you draw a card from the top of your library. That's easy. Then, you go into the in-between steps. In-between Steps The very next step is the Casting Step. As shown in the last section, casting is not too complicated once you know how to do it. Remember that casting is optional; you don't NEED to cast anything. Most creatures have a rule that during the first two turns that they are casted, they cannot attack or tap; this is often referred to as summoning sickness. Some have an ability called haste. '''(All lands have haste, even though they don't say that.) Haste means that they can tap and attack the moment the are cast. The next step is the '''Attacking Step. Here you attack with creatures alone. This is also optional. When you attack, you tap a number of creatures, (unless you just casted them, which means that they have summoning sickness, the opposite of haste.) These creatures are attacking. (Note that creatures with Vigilance don't need to tap to attack, but they of course can still be tapped.) (Note also that you don't have to tap anything to block.) The opponent can choose their blockers. One "unfair" thing is that you can block a creature with any number of your creatures. The one creature can choose which creature(s) it wants to kill, but if the blocking cards add to a too high number, than the attacking card must die. But anyway, the blocking opponent can choose also if it wants any damage to "go through" to their life or to their planeswalker's defense. After this, any destroyed creatures go to their controller's graveyards and the phase ends. The next phase or step is a second Casting Step. This is also optional and is useful in some very good ways. Sometimes it is better to cast things in the second Casting Phase than the first. The Last Step The very last step to a turn is to end it. Some cards say, "At the end of your turn," and have an action that occurs at this point. For example, Sunseed Nurturer says, "At the end of each of your turns, if you control a creature with power 5 or greater, you may gain 2 life. At the end of your whole turn, say, "done" to end it. Words